Democratic governments are in-fighting, imploding, and have few strong leaders. Autocratic governments have been gaining ground politically and economically and may soon take over. The question is how soon. Almost definitely within the next two decades, and possibly in less than two weeks. In my view, having worked at a Russian bank during the last Beijing Olympics in 2008, there is a high probability that Russia will invade Ukraine once the current Olympics adjourns. Furthermore, Vladimir Putin might have ambitions and the ability to conquer other former USSR countries he deems part of the Russian Empire, especially if the West does not get its act together. Finally, China might well take this opportunity to invade Taiwan and gain access to their semiconductors and technological expertise. This would all have dire effects for the West, even if Ukraine and Taiwan seem far away.
My Jewish grandfather escaped communist Russia in 1917 to flee to France where my father was born. Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. By 1938, Hitler had successfully annexed Austria (my grandmother’s birthplace) a sovereign country that Hitler claimed was historically and rightfully part of Germany. In response, France and Britain signed the Munich Pact to appease Germany. By 1939, Hitler broke the pact and annexed Czechoslovakia and then Poland. When Poland was invaded, France and Britain finally declared war, officially starting World War II. But they did not do much under UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and other leaders, so it was deemed a “phony war” until 1940 when France and England, under Winston Churchill, finally mobilized their forces to counter this threat.
Thus, Hitler was able to annex three countries he deemed as his former Empire in just six years from when he was elected Chancellor. This might be the standard that Vladimir Putin judges himself against. What if, at age 69, Putin has spent 20 years hoping to relive the glory of his hero Stalin and regain the Soviet and Russian Empire? Now would be his best chance, as Western powers are not showing leadership, unity, or military forces necessary to counter Putin’s should he decide to invade Ukraine and beyond.
Putin's Grandfather Was a Personal Cook to Joseph Stalin and Putin Seeks to Annex Lands Which He Deems Part of His Empire, Like Hitler Did
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My grandfather realized Hitler’s true ambitions when the Munich Pact was signed, before many others, and was able to secure coveted visas for his family to flee to America, which would largely become a land of peace. While the US has conducted wars in smaller countries like Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, we’ve managed to avoid a truly global conflict since the armistice following World War II. Is our relative peace now likely to come to an end?
Indeed, we can argue that we are already in a cold war with both China and Russia. Among the less visible threats, cyberattacks, misinformation and foreign election interference can now achieve what bombs used to do.
Now, the tanks of a hot war are barreling down to the Ukrainian border, while Western leaders respond with rhetoric. Russia and China might be laughing their way to victory while distracting Westerners with the Olympics.
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Some would argue that the conditions for our downfall have been brewing for some time. America is at war with itself, busy dismantling the institutions of its own democracy. Europe has a convoluted structure and lacks coherent leadership.
All that has left the door open for autocracy to take over. Small countries like Ukraine will fall first. But what happens next?
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist…
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
- Martin Niemoller
My analysis and warnings are rooted in both personal and professional experience. I studied and lived in Russia during the 1990s, when the USSR had imploded and the Great Russian Empire was thrust into embarrassing poverty. After earning my Master’s in International Security and Economics at Harvard, I worked in London for the premiere Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital in 2008, advising fund managers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan on IPOs and investments in Russia, Ukraine, and Africa. Later, I became the macroeconomist for the global mining firm Rio Tinto, where I advised the CEO on China and other countries, as well as developed different scenarios about how the world could unfold to ensure we had appropriate plans in place. In the late 1990s, I worked for DARPA, the Defense Department’s visionary arm that invented the Internet. I was honored to work on the same project as the founder of the Internet Vint Cerf on a project envisioned by Admiral John Poindexter to revolutionize national security awareness to detect threats to the US. For DARPA, I worked with military strategists and was skilled at envisioning the future and developing scenarios. I like to think that I inherited my grandfather's instinct and throughout my career have been able to foresee and connect dots especially among many global events before others. For instance, in February 2020, I was a lone voice warning that Covid was being underestimated and could cause a global outbreak and crash - while Goldman and others dismissed the impact of Covid. Sequoia did not put out its famous Black Swan call until March 5, and Bill Ackman's heralded bearish trade was put on in March.
What if Putin invades the Ukraine, but also keeps going until the entire USSR has been reconquered? China, meanwhile, is simply waiting for the right moment to invade Taiwan. US and European leaders do not understand the enormity of the problem. Unless we start preparing and offering credible threats to both China and Russia, they will re-shape the entire map of the world — including Africa, Eastern Europe, and even potentially, “Old Europe.” We also know they can impact US elections, even for the Presidency.
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Let’s consider some of the fundamental differences that underscore the threat that Putin represents. Putin’s idols are Peter the Great and Stalin, while Americans idolize sports and movie stars. Russians play chess, while Americans are obsessed with Monopoly (or now Bitcoin). Putin smirks at American billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who make their money selling silly trinkets and ad pages. Instead, he wants to amass power and achieve geopolitical domination. He is willing to incur significant economic costs to do so – and believes that the Western threat of sanctions is a joke, especially while European nations remain reliant on Russian gas and other commodities. Putin does not care about being a President; he wants to be an Emperor. What if Putin has been plotting for more than 20 years on how he can, at the very least, reestablish the territory of the USSR? Today, he has finally created his perfect opportunity to reestablish what he deems the Russian Empire’s role in the world.
The US and West may be pitifully underprepared to take on Putin and embarrassingly blind to the real possibility he will annex Ukraine in the coming days, not to mention the realities of his ambitions to regain influence over more countries he deems as rightfully his.
Even if Putin is bluffing or otherwise fails, we face threats on another, simultaneous front: China. The world's most populous country is laying the groundwork for its own takeover of Taiwan, while also securing critical mineral resources and claims on key infrastructure across Africa and beyond. In doing so, Xi is not-so-quietly cementing China’s power for decades to come.
Russia and China have spent years feeling belittled by the West given their relative lack of power. Western leaders keep hoping that their integration into the global system will make these countries act like Western liberal democracies. But Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi have been shrewdly gaining power while the West has given away their own. Putin and Xi look forward to the day when the tables turn, and it is Western nations that have to supplicate themselves to Russia and China – and that day is coming very soon. It could come as soon as next year as Russia moves across Europe and China moves into Taiwan if the West does not get its act together.
Given the recent alliance of China and Russia, I would argue that America is no longer a hegemony. International organizations we have relied on since the end of World War II might now be inert. Most NATO actions were undergirded by UN Security Resolutions – but now China and Russia are allied and hold two of the five votes in the UN Security Council. We hear very little from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz claim to speak for NATO’s power but Putin assesses that the rhetoric is all bark but no bite. It can be argued that they are not even barking very well. Macron condescends to Putin that he is European while Putin does not necessarily aspire to this but is a proud Russian. Meanwhile, he knows both Macron and Biden are in precarious positions with middling popularity upcoming elections. Scholz is new to the job and won't confirm that Germany would join with the rest of NATO given his country's reliance on Russian energy.
America and the West must realize that they are losing power in the world and must step up dramatically if they want to maintain their way of life.
I have many powerful billionaires, CEOs, Presidents, prestigious academics and journalists on my newsletter whom I have met over the years at Davos, Harvard, and elsewhere. I hope you will take these concerns seriously and work to change the course of America and the West. Unfortunately, I do not see most of these points being made by the current pundits and politicians, as the vast majority of them do not speak Russian and do not seem to have an understanding of Russia's culture nor its recent or past history. I know this is long but I want to fill in the holes and explain what might be a grim scenario, for which we need to prepare. I also provide some suggestions at the end, but this will require resolve from people at the highest levels. I know this might sound alarmist but I feel I owe it to my father Mark R Joelson and grandfather to use my reach to spread the word about a potential impending threat in hopes that the right people will read it and do something.
Beijing Olympics in 2022 and 2008 – Striking Similarities But Putin Has Learned His Lessons and the West Has Not
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Chinese leader Hu Jintao was keen to be on good terms with President George Bush during the 2008 Olympics |
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared a united front against the US at the 2022 Olympics |
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There is a high chance that the next World War could start after the Olympics. In my view, Putin is merely waiting to invade Ukraine after the Olympics as a show of respect for China’s President Xi. And it wouldn’t take long for Putin to prevail. Already, Putin has amassed more than 130,000 troops to the Ukrainian border. According to the Washington Post, U.S. US military assessments have concluded that Ukraine’s government could fall in two days! (Washington Post, Feb. 6)
And the timing is no coincidence.
In 2008, China hosted its first Olympics — a “coming out party” to the global stage. With global leaders distracted, Putin used this opportunity to start an invasion into the Republic of Georgia on August 8, 2008, the very first day of the Olympics. Today's situation highlights how Russia and China’s relationship has strengthened since 2008. In 2008, Hu Jintao was the President of China, and he was keen to curry favor with President Bush and supported UN actions against Putin’s invasion of Georgia. Since then, Xi Jinping ascended to power in 2013. In 2015, Xi held the 2015 China Victory Day Parade at which Vladimir Putin was in attendance, while the US sent its ambassador. This event may have paved the way to a better friendship and alliance between China and Russia. Alas, for the Beijing 2022 Olympics, Putin flew to China to meet with Xi ahead of China’s big event and “declared a unified front against the United States.” This is why I think Russia will wait until after the Olympics to invade the Ukraine.
Western politicians threaten Putin with sanctions, but this is not as credible threat as they believe. In 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea led to sanctions that “mired Russia in economic and political upheaval.” Since that time, Putin has worked to ensure Russia will be less vulnerable during any conflict by reducing its use of dollars, cutting spending, replacing Western imports and trimming budgets to be able to withstand isolation – as detailed by country risk and sanctions expert Rachel Ziemba.
At the same time, critical commodities are in short supply. Jeff Currie, a 25-year veteran Goldman commodity analyst, with whom I interacted when I was at Rio Tinto, has stated that he has “never seen a commodity shortage like now, including aluminum, gas, coal and even oil.”
Currie attributes the shortages to a “Revenge of the Old Economy” situation, as the global demand for goods meets lack of commodity investment. While I agree there has been underinvestment in commodities by the West in the last decade, I wonder if this could also be a byproduct of “Putin and Xi’s Revenge.” How many commodities have Russia and China stockpiled to keep them off the market for the West?
During the 2008 Olympics, oil surged to a peak of $150 in part because China stockpiled volumes to ensure that their party on the world stage went flawlessly. Russia avoided refilling natural gas storage in summer 2021 as it prioritized domestic stockpiles and aimed to encourage a quick approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Now it is restricting some exports of fertilizer and grains to prioritize domestic supplies – only adding to global food price pressures.
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As oil prices are expected to rise in the wake of a Ukrainian invasion, Russia has strengthened ties with China, and Russia has made itself more self-sufficient. So does Putin care that much about vague promises to scuttle the Nord Stream pipeline? One of China's biggest issues is it is a huge oil and commodity importer. Russia is an oil and commodity exporter. An alliance between these two countries lessens the need for Germany and Europe as a market for Russia - instead those regions may suffer more from sanctions and end of Nord Stream 2 because Russian supplies will be diverted to China.
Therefore, these threats of sanctions and promises to stop the Nord Stream pipeline may be outdated and moot. Russia is rolling in the tanks — taking advantage of the cold weather, which keeps the tundra frozen and easily passable so that they can invade once the Olympics have adjourned.
I’ve Witnessed the Humiliation that Motivates Putin First Hand
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During college, I became fascinated with what was happening in Russia, so I spent a year and a half in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This was the period during which Western economists had advised a “Shock Therapy” program for the Russian economy, which impoverished the Russian people. In "Harvard Boys Do Russia", the Nation explained that Western economists advised the government to:
I wanted to help the economy convert and as an 18-year-old college kid, I got a contract with US Sandia National Labs to work with some of Russia’s most elite scientists in St. Petersburg. They were making $40 a month, relying on help from a young American girl who had just started learning Russian and had taken just one year of college physics. But I was trying to help more than most expatriates - many of whom were making money by importing Western cigarettes and other goods.
At the same time, Putin himself was driving a cab to make ends meet. It’s possible that I was once his patron. Like other foreigners, each night I would put my hand up and hail down strangers like Putin, all driving a decrepit Lada. We would negotiate a ride for $1-5 which was 1000-5000 rubles – imagine the inflation the Russians endured as they lost their whole life savings! Cabbies like Putin would often take us to our expatriate bars, in which we would spend as much in a night that these brilliant Russians would earn in a month.
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Putin and many other Russian men had to become taxi drivers to make ends meet |
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Russian grandmothers "babushkas" lost the value of their pensions |
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Throughout that period, I learned about Russian history from a Russian perspective — something that few Western leaders and pundits opining about the future have seemed to do.
For instance, Stalin is seen by many as a national hero. He is credited for saving Russia from Hitler and defeating Nazi Germany. He established a world-class metro system connecting all of Moscow. It is the most beautiful and well-run public transit I have ever used. His buildings are considered to be the best-built in the country, with the “Seven Sisters” skyscrapers a particular point of pride. I became friends with a babushka who had been cleaning the dormitory of the Plekhanov Institute of Economics, in which I studied. She would wax nostalgic about the great life under Stalin including pensions and work for his people. The entrance into “democracy and capitalism” thrust her into a life of poverty, where her pension was now worthless. This was the real impact of the American advice of “Shock Therapy” - contributing to Russians' collective amnesia of Stalin's atrocities.
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One of Stalin's Seven Sister buildings - this is of Moscow State University where my grandfather studied (but in a more humble building as he fled in 1917 before Stalin rebuilt the "Harvard of Russia" |
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Built in 1935 under Stalin, the Moscow Metro is still deemed the best metro in the world, very efficient and gorgeous metro stations |
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Western advisors told Russia they needed to sell off their companies and give employees a "privatization check." Understandably, many Russians did not understand what this was and they sold them to get much needed money for food. This led to the rise of the oligarchs who bought their companies for a song by offering pennies for checks. |
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With Shock Therapy in the 1990s, Russians lost their savings and no longer had a safety net. Imagine inflation of 2,500%!
Russians could no longer afford an evening at the Bolshoi Theatre. Instead, they would wait hours to go to the first McDonald's to see what was so great about America.
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Putin’s Plans to Rebuild the Russian Empire, USSR, and Perhaps Beyond
Ukraine is just the beginning of a much larger dream that, for Putin, has been years in the making. He has obviously always been a nationalist as a former KGB agent. According to Wikipedia, Putin's grandfather, was a personal cook to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. His entire life has been oriented around rebuilding and regaining the glory of the Russian Empire and the USSR, of which Ukraine represents a key missing piece.
As Putin told a boisterous crowd after annexing Crimea in 2014, Ukraine represents the Orthodox-Christian kingdom of Rus, the basis of Russian civilization. Crimea has “always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,” he said, and Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, is “the mother of Russian cities.” More recently, he has repeated his longstanding claim that “Ukraine is not even a country”; the “greater part” of its territory “was given to us.”
The origin of Russia’s resentment toward NATO enlargement can be traced to February 1990, when then-US Secretary of State James Baker assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.” In September of that year, as part of the Two Plus Four Agreement that permitted German reunification, the Soviets consented to NATO membership for Germany only. Robert Gates, who became CIA director the following year, later admitted that the Russians were “misled.” As a result, while Leningrad was 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) from NATO’s eastern edge at the end of the Cold War, St. Petersburg is now less than 100 miles away.
Putin’s Potential Plan
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If Putin does successfully invade Ukraine without prompting an effective response, why would he stop there? Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan has already demonstrated how little leadership and resolve the West has when it comes to military conflict or in maintaining influence.
As noted, he resents NATO’s expansion as a betrayal of its promise not to expand eastward after 1990. Yet, look at all the countries that joined in that expansion: Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. If he’s able to take Ukraine quickly, and without a meaningful response from the West, how much of a fight could those countries realistically offer? Putin could simply roll into them, one by one.
Just like Hitler did in my grandfather’s time.
An Opening for China
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China has never recognized Taiwan as independent. They have been extending military power into the South China Sea and towards Taiwan for years. They continue to coerce countries not to support Taiwan – most recently Lithuania.
When China does make its move on Taiwan, they know that the West cannot afford an all-out war, especially if Putin is expanding to Europe.
Taiwan and China are the two largest producers of semiconductors worldwide. In 2021, the entire global economy was impacted by chip shortages in numerous industries. If China takes over Taiwan, it will gain access to Taiwan Semiconductor as well as many prestigious scientific universities that will upgrade China’s technological know-how.
Distraction in America and the West
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And what are America and Europe doing? The short answer: everything but accepting that our entire way of life might be at risk.
While China and Russia have been plotting world domination, the American government and its people are too busy fighting amongst themselves, breaking down the very democratic institutions on which their country was founded.
The UK is getting rid of Boris Johnson, a leader who is extremely flawed but also is the only one with potentially the courage and reverence of Churchill to face Putin. Having made a bold, controversial, and successful Brexit, the UK is ejecting the Prime Minister over “partygate.” The UK should take the Russian threat more seriously or it could result in having to withstand subsequent bombardment on London and beyond.
Investors are focused on inflation and interest rates, more interested in cryptocurrency and the Metaverse than the real “meta” issue of global and total war or even really grappling with economic competition. We go for quick fixes like releasing strategic reserves or sanctions rather than taking hard decisions to reduce the reliance on China for goods or Russia for fuel.
The West has so far been unwilling to prioritize its own long-term survival over short-term gains. At a time when China continues developing and executing on its long-term plans, the American government can barely pass a budget. While US officials are now waking up to the challenges, many of their tools – boosting R&D, restricting US financing to the Chinese military complex and banning products from Xinjiang are unlikely to reduce the hold of Chinese products on American consumers.
The West continues to foolishly export jobs and technical know-how to China. We order Amazon packages to our doorstep, not considering that their contents are filled with largely frivolous goods manufactured in China by Chinese workers, fueling their economy, spurring inflation, and leading to climate change. We also don’t consider how those same goods are sent halfway around the world on gas-guzzling ships, then delivered to our door on fuel-run trucks. The entire time, we’re boosting inflation in the U.S., while squandering the precious commodities that we would need should a real global conflict occur. Meanwhile, Bezos and other billionaires revel in their ability to “outsmart” the US tax system so that they can fly in spaceships while denying their countries that educated them, provided for their roads and bridges that they use and their companies use, and depleting the governmental system of the funds it needs to keep bridges from collapsing – all while the Chinese have continually sought to revolutionize their infrastructure.
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China is investing in infrastructure like bridges |
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American billionaires like Jeff Bezos pride themselves on not paying taxes |
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American bridges are falling down, falling down, falling down |
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Our wealthiest and most powerful citizens, billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg, have their heads in the sand, consumed with dreams of interstellar travel or visions of trading trinkets in a virtual world. But such billionaires may even be more at risk as Putin has very special ways to deal with oligarchs and may take revenge on American oligarchs in response to Congress’ Magnitsky Act. A superyacht just makes for an easier target. Fleeing to space gets a lot less glamorous when you realize you’ll be circling the planet forever, with no place to land.
Perhaps the only thing on which Republicans and Democrats have been able to agree is the condemnation of Russia and China’s appalling human rights records. Putin and Xi are salivating at the chance to return the favor, instead being the ones who lecture, dictate, and coerce Westerners on how they are supposed to live, deploying their favored tools of heavy surveillance and cracking down on freedom of speech.
America, and the idea of democracy writ large, is on a collision course with Russian, China, and all the autocracies who look to them.
Unless we get our act together, stop looking amongst ourselves for enemies and identify the real foes at our gates, the consequences might be unimaginably dire.
We still have a chance. There’s still time to defend our democracy and way of life. Just last year, the West proved itself capable of the seemingly impossible, with its triumphant first discovery of the COVID-19 vaccine.
We do lack leadership but here are a few ideas to better address these adversaries:
1) Bring Merkel back into a leadership role (perhaps as a special envoy for NATO) as she is the only Western leader that speaks Russian and understands Putin and Russia.
2) Bring in a new US Defense Department that can conduct a war. Afghanistan was an embarrassment.
3) Actually set up NATO forces.
4) Tell China that we will not accept any exports from their country if they invade Taiwan.
5) Hold China to account over failure to meet Phase 1 of the trade deal and step-up plans to invest more at home in the US to build critical infrastructure.
6) Tell China that the US will support all countries to renege on all foreign debt as a result of the economic carnage that the Covid virus created.
7) Work with African and Latin American countries to secure precious minerals and develop green energy and other supply chains. Create an alternate development funding and financing so that China is not the only game in town.
8) Announce that we are in wartime and that we will start restricting non-essential goods. No longer can Americans order ridiculous discretionary goods. We have essential workers driving around non-essential goods, depleting natural resources which also drives inflation, contributing to landfills, exacerbating the trade imbalance with China. Just this last week, I got three separate packages from Amazon as gifts but all those goods generated tons of fossil fuel to reach me and will just end up in landfill - I asked that I be sent a thoughtful email or given a card instead (or flowers ;)) I've ordered a few things when I could not find the goods easily and they were stolen, likely sold back online, and Amazon gave me my money back - likely to be able to get a tax loss. This is not fair competition for small or even big businesses and is wasting precious commodities to ruin the environment and drive up inflation.
9) Stop the assault on Boris Johnson as he seems to be the only European leader who understands Churchill’s role in WW2 and has pulling off a bold move such as Brexit. I gained UK citizenship when I lived in London and the country needs to honor their history and get their priorities straight. Perhaps the Queen could provide a leadership role.
10) Set up a brain trust of experts. As mentioned, most of the expert and official voices I hear on tv seem to have no clue about Putin and Russia. As well, the US should try to leverage the eccentric genius of Elon Musk instead of obsessing over his tweets.
11) Billionaires need to step up and contribute their fair share to the economy, education, and infrastructure, as the crippling of the country has led to a reduction in our national security. If billionaires are not inspired by these civic reasons, remind them that Putin has a special way of dealing with oligarchs.
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But if all that sounds too extreme, we can keep talking about virtual reality and petty differences. And when we’re overtaken by autocracy, we can feign astonishment, asking ourselves what we could have done differently.
I have many powerful billionaires, CEOs, Presidents, prestigious academics and journalists on my newsletter whom I have met over the years at Davos, Harvard, and elsewhere. I hope you will take these concerns seriously and work to change the course of America and the West. Unfortunately, I do not see most of these points being made by the current pundits and politicians.
Please feel free to forward this so that others can better understand the threat we are facing in hopes that we will mobilize to better address it. I am happy to talk further. Best way to reach me is to email me at mmjoelson@gmail.com.
Best,
Maya
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Maya is a Harvard-trained economist who leverages her two decades of top-level experience across Wall Street, the City of London, emerging markets, and advanced technology to devise investment strategies for her clients. She advised the CEO and Board of Rio Tinto on macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns. Maya founded Meta Point Advisors after several years as a Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch. Maya's clients benefit from her ability to provide savvy active management without the cumbersome costs and structure of mutual funds. She has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the World Economic Forum.
Marisa Joelson holds a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, a MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University, and a BA from Wesleyan University.
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